Historically the billing process has been a three party process. More particularly, the typical billing process consists of billers, such as merchants, utility companies, service providers and bankcard companies, preparing hardcopy paper bills either directly or through an independent bill preparation service provider. The bills normally consist of detailed billing information relating to the goods or services purchased or ordered, including a detailed itemization of the billed charges. The billing information also includes the total charge, due date for payment and, in many cases, the minimum amount which must be paid by the due date.
The hardcopy billing information relating to each individual biller is then placed in a separate envelope and mailed through the postal service to the applicable payor. The envelope may also be stuffed with other materials such as other product offerings, e.g., special discounts or new goods or services. Hence, each payor has historically received billing information from each biller as an individual hardcopy piece of correspondence received by mail.
Most, although not all, billers bill on a periodic basis, such as each calendar month or every thirty days. However, although billers may issue bills covering similar periods of time, e.g., thirty day periods, individual billers may have billing cycles and bill issue dates which vary. For example, some monthly billers may have a billing period which extends from the fifteenth of one month to the fifteenth of the next month, while other billers may have a monthly billing period which extends from the last day of one month to the last day of the following month. Further, even if different billers bill charges incurred over identical periods, the issue dates of the bills can vary widely. Accordingly, payors typically receive bills at various times throughout, for example, any given calendar month.
Payors continue to receive large numbers of hardcopy paper bills from individual billers. Hence, bill presentment has remained a tedious and expensive task both in terms of the preparation and the distribution of billing information.
To complete the billing process individual payors have historically made payments directly to each individual biller by hardcopy paper check drawn against a financial institution and mailed via the postal service to the biller's remittance center. A returnable portion of the billing information received from the biller is typically returned with the check. The biller must then present the check for payment through the payor's financial institution before the payment funds can be actually received by the biller and applied against the payors account.
For example, it has been common for many years for consumers to pay monthly bills byway of a personal check written by the consumer and sent by mail to the entity from which the bill or invoice was received. Consumers have used other ways to pay bills, including personally visiting the billing entity to make a cash payment. In today's economy, it is not unusual for a consumer to have several regular monthly invoices to pay. Writing individual checks to pay each invoice can be time-consuming and costly due to postage and other related expenses.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method whereby a consumer can contact a single source and inform the source to pay various bills of the consumer, to have the source adjust the consumer's account with the consumer's financial institution (ie., bank, credit union, savings and loan association, etc.) to reflect a bill payment, and to actually pay the billing entity a specified amount by a particular time. The system should be efficient and not unreasonably expensive and relatively simple for a consumer to interact with.
Some banks have attempted to provide a service for making payment to a few billing entities to which the banks have established relations. The banks that do provide that type of service are limited in that they provide the service only for their own customers since the banks have not developed a system for accurately acquiring and processing account numbers and balances of customers of all other banking institutions and coordinating that information with bill payment. Furthermore, banks have not developed a system for managing the risks involved in providing such a service and the inherent complexities of providing the service to consumers other than the bank's own customers.
Therefore, a need exists for a single source system that would be available to any consumer, regardless of where the consumer banks and regardless of what bills are to be paid.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a technique for electronically presenting billing information in a manner which facilitates the timely payment of bills by payors.